America's Kids



Posted: Saturday, August 13, 2011

by Walter Rhett
Charleston Perlo


Chinese toddler, California; circa1850-1925. LOC.

We are seeing Dickens' England, transposed to modern times. The shapeshifting of Brazil's lost children, the global trafficking of children, the persistance of child marriages, children as sex workers and causalities of war and of morally bankrupt communities from South Africa (where infant rape is reported) to Haiti's tent cities (where mothers are unable to assist their children who are raped by gangs) is the bleak backdrop for the status of American children--often the victims of the economy, poor and neglectful parenting, a lack of networks, a failure of services, and a loss of hope and creativity at an early age.

Children rarely collect rocks or butterflies anymore. The lucky ones are immersed into Chinese or arts and music (sometimes math and science), but the least of these are only blips on the annual test results, aggregated into a cohort test score determining teacher job security, funding, and misplaced blame.

How did America begin to igmore the despair of its children? I have good friends, married teachers with successful adult children, who have taken in a smart eight year old whose extended family includes a mother's boyfriend, an great aunt and uncle, an aunt, a missing father and a mother in and out of institutions who has no residence of her own. After a weekend with her family, her new coat, bookbag, jeans are missing when she returns.

But the modern climate makes it hard to provide care. The fear of abuse, of evil lurking near, has blocked the freedom we knew as children and the freedom for children to stretch their horizons in a seamless community of care.

There is small hope: on my daughter's block in DC the unsupervised 9 yr olds ride up to greet her (9 on school nights!), but are curious and eager to engage. But Charles is right to point out how humbling some of the big questions are that we face. Langston Hughes phrased it eloguently, "What's happens to a dream deferred?"


Somali Children in Dadaab Refugee Camp, Kenya. July 2011.

Walter Rhett Walter Rhett attended Ohio State and writes from Charleston, SC. He writes about national and global affairs with an eye on Southern history and culture and enjoys listening to his readers.

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